Pub to give free Christmas dinners to tackle 'scourge' of loneliness

Seven years ago, when Mick Dore and his wife Sarah began giving free Christmas dinners to people who would otherwise spend the day on their own, they served four or five people at most. But since then, that figure has exploded – on Christmas Day in 2022, they fed 186 people.

The couple, who run The Alexandra pub in Wimbledon, are from Scarborough but have lived in London for the past 38 years. Dore tells Yahoo UK that it all began with him offering to buy a pint or two for a few people who were spending Christmas Day alone.

"Then one year, it changed. I had a guy come down, a retired sailor, and he’s such a lovely man. After a couple of pints, I said to him, 'We’re having Christmas dinner for our staff, why don’t you stay?' He declined and said he had somewhere to go, but he clearly didn’t," he recalls.

"Anyway, he went off and I said to my wife, we should offer some food to people like that. Next year, there’s only half a dozen people or so, it won’t be that difficult to have a bit of extra turkey, so that’s what we did. It’s kind of spiralled a bit since then," Dore adds with a chuckle.

Feeding nearly 200 people is no easy task, but Dore says he and Sara manage with help from volunteers, many of whom would also be alone on Christmas Day if it weren’t for the dinner at his pub.

"It just gets bigger every year! You can’t book or anything, we just throw the doors open for a few hours and people turn up, it’s very much aimed at anybody who’s on their own."

Local taxi drivers chip in to help drop people off and others from the community donate presents and food – making it a community event. A broad range of people turn up each year, which has surprised Dore in some ways.

"You imagine it would be mostly old people, and largely it is, but there’s also au pairs who have the day off and don't have anyone else to spend it with.

"We also get people who have to work on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Lots of them are from up north, so they can’t get home for the day – they come to us instead." NHS workers who have been working the morning shift nearby also take the opportunity to spend time at The Alexandra on Christmas Day, and people from all around the world end up there if they can’t go home.

Dore says that, while he does have a lot of people coming to the pub, their free dinner only "scratches the surface". "There’s thousands of people who are lonely, aren’t there?" he says. "It ought to be the best day of the year. But for a lot of people, it’s the absolute worst day of the year."

He labels loneliness in the UK as a "scourge of society", and it gets worse during the festive season. "It’s one of those times when everyone sees everybody else having a good time and if you’re not, it really brings it home that you’re vulnerable and accelerates the feeling of being excluded or isolated, doesn’t it? When people are lonely, it affects their mental and physical health, so it’s really important that we do our best to help make it better, even if it’s just for a few people."

Recalling some of the stories he’s heard over the years from people who come for Christmas dinner at The Alexandra, Dore says there’s always "a lot of tears on the day". "A man who came a couple of years ago told us that it was the first time he was having Christmas dinner with anybody for 16 years," he says.

"That’s staggering. Another lady drove to us from Basingstoke one year, she set off at 5am. We get divorcees who get their kids every second year, but when they haven’t got the kids they’re on their own, so they come to us.

"Some people prefer to come and volunteer because it makes them feel better than just getting a meal. We also have more volunteers than we need, really, but I don’t like turning people away because there’s a danger they’ll end up on their own if I do. We’ll find a job for everyone."

Dore adds that he does not take cash donations for the Christmas dinner he and Sara host for people on their own, and warns the public not to donate to any fundraisers using their pub’s name. "We have little collection boxes in the pub on the bar. We don’t have a JustGiving page or anything like that, last year I caught three different sites purporting to raise money for us that had nothing to do with us. Please don’t donate to any online fundraisers, they are fake."

He emphasises the importance of having a community space in a big city like London, where it can get even lonelier despite it being a hustling, bustling hive of activity and people. "When there’s a social occasion like this one, you get a chance to come out and chat with people instead of sitting around your house, you can come out and have a bit of a laugh. I just think it’s so important."

Dore also believes that there are plenty of things other people can do to help tackle the issue of loneliness in the UK. From having a chat with an older person when you’re in a queue, to volunteering at community events, to ringing someone and having a five-minute chat on the phone, he encourages us to look out for one another – it’s all about empathy.

"If you look closer at someone and just imagine their life for a second," he says. "We can all be a bit nicer to each other. We’ve lost a bit of that in life, generally.

"In modern life, it seems like we don’t really have the time for each other anymore. But we can all do something to change that, it’s just the little things I think that really help."

Read more about loneliness and Christmas:

• Elderly Brits are facing a ‘loneliness epidemic’ this Christmas: How can you help? (Yahoo Life UK: 8-min read)

• How to look after your mental health if you're spending Christmas alone (Yahoo Life UK, 5-min read)]

• Andrea McLean opens up about midlife ‘loneliness’: How to help someone struggling (Yahoo Life UK, 5-min read)